For 36 years the Tennessee Valley Rehabilitation Center has operated a sheltered workshop for disabled people.

But now, the economic downturn has reached its Tri-County Industries, leaving 25 people out of work.

TVRC is headquartered on the Calhoun Community College campus.

Director Kathy Cagle said that Tammy Moore, TVRC’s job development specialist, had arranged two interviews at Walmart, one in Decatur and one in Moulton, for the displaced workers.

“We’ve also gotten one of them a job with Phoenix Industries in Huntsville,” said Cagle. “They’ll be working here through the end of the week, but we will go on trying to procure jobs for them. We work with four counties – Morgan, Lawrence, Limestone and Cullman—and Tammy has a lot of job leads.”

Cagle said it has always been the mission for Tri-County Industries to be self-supporting.

“But we’ve really had a struggle the last couple of years,” she said. “The revenue just didn’t meet expenses. Some of the companies we work with, instead of laying their people off in this bad economy they pulled their contracts back in house.”

TVRC has been in operation since 1958, but added its sheltered workshop, Tri-County Industries, in 1972. Since then, dozens of disabled workers have performed jobs for many large area industries.

Cagle said that, for now, TVRC will continue to function without Tri-County Industries.

“TVRC has questionable funding,” she said. “We are on a fee-for-service arrangement with the state and we will do this as long as we can. We have no plans to shut our vocational part down. We’ll just see how it goes.

“We work with the Alabama Department of Rehabilitation Services out of Decatur. They send us referrals for evaluations, job assessments and job placements.”